


sometimes it's hard being ellis munro

by FatalFlaw



Category: Dark Nights with Poe and Munro, The Shapeshifting Detective (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28073988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalFlaw/pseuds/FatalFlaw
Summary: It's Valentines, and Poe is spending it with his wife.
Relationships: Ellis Munro/John Pope
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	sometimes it's hard being ellis munro

Sometimes it is hard being Ellis Munro. Like when its valentine day and your radio co-host, love of your life, partner in crime - is having a romantic dinner with his wife. So you draw up a warm bath filled with rose-scented bubbles and try not to imagine how much nicer it would be with John in it. You try not to imagine him in someone else's romantic bath. Come to think of it you don’t even know whether or not John has a bathtub at home. But maybe they’ve checked in to a hotel? Maybe he’s surprised his wife with a romantic dinner, maybe he is saying that he loves her - maybe he even means it…

Ugh this is useless. How pathetic can you be? Spending valentines day thinking about John and his wife. He’d said he wanted to spend the day with you but that it was impossible to come up with an excuse, that she’d get suspicious if he told her that he was working late on valentines day. But was that the truth? They could have easily done a valentines day Poe and Munro special. Yeah, it wouldn’t be as nice as having him in your bathtub, but it would be nicer than having him home with his wife. He said often that is was a loveless marriage, that they were just going through the motions. But then why celebrate valentines day? Or was that just another one of the motions? 

You’d imagined him leaving his wife so many times. Imagined him stepping into Radio August telling her that it was only them now, that he loved her and only her and was ready to live that reality. Sometimes you thought he would never do it, not because he didn’t dare but because he didn’t want to. Because he wanted the domestic life he had with his wife, liked being a wholesome family unit. You have many good qualities, but wholesome is not one of them.

On the few occasions you feel guilty about the whole affair it is because of his kids. If his wife ever found out and left him, or if he ever mustered the courage to leave himself their whole lives would change, and not for the better. You’re not interested in playing family with John and his kids and you doubt you’d be any good at it anyways. 

You don’t want John Pope, you want Poe. You want him like he is on the radio, like he is with you. Unburdened by responsibility. All of the flirting with none of the fighting about whose turn it is to take out the trash. 

But then there is the fact that you go home to an empty apartment and John goes home to his wife. He has the best of both worlds, you the best of none. You don’t like thinking about your relationship this way. When you look at it this way what John has with his wife is real and what he has with you is an extra. She’s the main course and you’re the dessert. And yeah ice-cream is nice but there’s a reason why you don’t eat it for dinner every day. She is nourishing and you are sickly sweet. 

You prefer looking at it this way; what you two have is passion and flame, real and electric. All desire and no monotony. There is no house and marriage and children tying you to one another - only love. You’re not the other woman, you’re not the mistress. You’re the main event, the love of his life. His muse, his partner in crime.

But when you’re alone on valentines day, surrounded by rose-scented bubbles - regretting your choice of bubble bath more and more - neither way of looking at it seems all that appealing. Either you are just his mistress, or true love means being treated just like you are. Sitting all alone in a bathtub trying to muster up that ~self love~ that everyone talks so much about. Sometimes you tell yourself that you are independent. That you have your own life, that you don’t have to be tied to John.

But what is independent about sitting around being sad about what a man is doing. About being dedicated to someone who doesn’t repay that dedication? You lower your head until it’s underwater, letting the warm bath calm your thoughts.   
Maybe your love is doomed, maybe it’s never going to work out. Maybe it’s always going to be in this state of being not quite right, of there always being a thought gnawing at the back of your mind. A doubt eating away at you. Or maybe you’re overthinking things. Maybe you’re comparing a real life relationship to some unobtainable ideal. Perfection doesn’t exist.

And the sex is good. 

And it’s not like you’re pledging to be his forever. You’re just enjoying the here and now. The on air flirting and the off air conclusion of said flirting. The chemistry and the passion. You’re not going to deny yourself that because your relationship doesn’t meet some weird standard of purity.

And tomorrow he is going to be all yours.


End file.
